Digital Dark Age Launch Tomorrow!

I’ve been working on my degree major project ‘Digital Dark Age’ at Futureworks here in Manchester for 7 months, which isn’t really that long but it feels like an eternity! One thing I’m super happy with is how much I’ve learned and developed over that time. Even though some days it feels like I’m banging my head against a virtual brick wall with Unreal Engine, the problems I’ve encountered and (thankfully) solved have been an important part of this journey.

My initial goal was to create an immersive environment within which I could feature 5 original compositions that form a short concept album, this would be supported by a digital and physical format release via my Bandcamp page. I knew that I wanted something quite stylised for the whole project, and it turns out that the first person level I created in Unreal became a bit of an obsession! I spent a lot of time on the 5 songs for this project, and I felt that the level had to match that degree of authenticity and the aesthetic I was trying to portray… cue countless nights stuck trying to figure out (relatively simple) tasks in Unreal Engine, losing builds, breaking the mechanics of certain features, losing audio, getting audio back, running at 13fps, scripting Blueprints until 3am and trying to figure out what an earth I’d done wrong whilst drinking LOTS of coffee.

The ‘engineering corridor’ was a fairly late addition to the levels design…

A lot of tasks took longer than they should have, but I was at the end of the day teaching myself techniques and methods I’d read about in the Unreal documentation and via Youtube tutorial videos (which are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth). I think it’s important to talk about the problems I encountered as it makes me feel a whole lot better knowing that I’ve solved 99% of them, and I want to say a big thank you to everyone that’s helped support the project (folks on floor 2 at Futureworks I’m talking to you!).

Latest wireframe overview of the level.

The project finally launches tomorrow at the Eagle Inn in Salford, which has a suitably small and dark venue. It’s free entry and I’ll be around from 6pm onwards so feel free to come along for a pint and a natter. I’ll have 10 of the cassettes to sell and folks will be able to play on the level first hand. The night will be streamed live via Facebook (part of my assessed criteria) and maybe via Twitter as well. My next blog post will be after the launch and (if I’m still breathing) I’ll be reflecting on the event itself.

Thanks for reading folks and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the project.

Check out Digital Dark Age on Cartrdge hereDigital / Cassette Album on Bandcamp here